Tag Archives: Retail

GM has written a lot about how so many cherished Georgetown landmarks have closed over the last couple years. Whether it’s Nathans, Furin’s, Bartleby Books, Garretts, the Guards, or Barnes and Noble, each has left a large hole.

But cheer up Georgetown! We’ve added future cherished landmarks at the same time. Just take these two examples:

Do you remember what the Georgetown Waterfront looked like ten years ago? It was this:

This is obviously a huge improvement! Ten, twenty years down the road we won’t even be able to imagine what it would be like to not have a beautiful waterfront park (which by then will be full of graceful mature trees).

And here’s the other: Stachowski’s. A couple years ago, could you imagine that a good old fashioned butcher shop would come to Georgetown, back in the neighborhood no less? It’s just the sort of thing residents pine for, yet never seems to materialize. Except in this case. Continue reading →

Next week is National Small Business Week. It’s an even started by the Small Business Administration to celebrate small businesses across the country. The agency will run a conference all week on topics germane to small businesses. But registration is full and, besides, conferences a incredibly boring.

But that’s no reason not to celebrate! A better way to show your love of small businesses is to actually patronize them. So make a special effort next week to visit any of these small independent shops in Georgetown:

GM knows the best way to get an early tip on what new stores are coming to the neighborhood is to get your hands on the Old Georgetown Board agenda. That’s because all new signage needs OGB approval, and the agenda normally lists what company is asking for the new sign.

And from this GM found out about a handful of random stores that apparently are coming to Georgetown. Here they are:

Stachowski Market

Well this one isn’t really news; we’ve known for a while that Jamie Stachowski was opening a butcher shop in the old Griffin Market space. But it’s always nice to see that a project you are excited about is still moving forward.

Sunglass Hut

Apparently a Sunglass Hut is moving into 3251 M St. This is currently where Shoe Gallery is, between Chipotle and Havana Max. Not terribly exciting, GM realizes… Continue reading →

As discussed a few times over the last couple days, GM recently finished his annual survey of stores in Georgetown (again, just for reference sake, “stores” in this context means stores, restaurants, salons, etc.; basically any commercial space except pure office space). He’s sliced and diced the numbers and is ready to serve them up.

Overall Numbers

This year GM counted a total of 510 stores in Georgetown. This is a drop from the 527 he counted last year. As noted last week, this doesn’t mean Georgetown lost a net of 17 stores; it’s a bit worse than that. That’s because every year GM counts a few more stores that he overlooked in previous years.

When you just isolate out the openings and closings, the situation looks a lot worse. There were 78 closings in Georgetown in 2011. That compares with a total of 43 closings from the year before, and 47 the year before that. That’s a 81% increase in store closings. Put in context: 15% of stores open in February 2010 are now closed.

You might think that the gutting of the mall is causing this increase, but that’s not the whole story. Yes, 38 of the closings were in the mall (compared with only 16 the year before) but that still means that 40 non-mall stores closed. Last year only 27 non-mall stores closed. That’s a 48% increase.

The good news is that there was a corresponding increase in openings to somewhat offset this gloom. There were 43 openings in 2011. That compares with 30 the year before, and 22 the year before that. So that means there were almost twice the number of stores opening in 2011 than in 2009. That’s some good momentum.

But there are still more new vacancies now then there was a year ago, 35 to be exact (to make the total number of vacancies 117). That’s an increase in vacancies of almost 300% over last year’s 13 net loss. This increase probably can be mostly attributable to the mall. Thus the overall story is that the pace of turnover (i.e. old stores being replaced by new stores) increased from 2010 to 2011, but the spike in vacancies in the mall means the net losses are way up. Continue reading →

This is the time of the year when GM goes out and does an audit on all the stores in Georgetown. He walks up and down all the streets and notes whether a store is still open, or if it closed, or if the space is still vacant, etc. And while there was a whole lot of activity in 2011, both on the openings and closings side, it turned out to be a net negative year for the neighborhood. GM will have a long post slicing and dicing the numbers next week, but here’s a preview.

In 2011, GM counted 530 stores in Georgetown. (For the purposes of this exercise, a “store” is a shop, restaurant, salon, etc. Basically any commercial establishment except purely office space). This year the total tally is 509. And the reduction of 21 stores is probably slightly worse than it sounds because every year GM adds some more shops to his list that he overlooked in previous years. In fact GM counted 96 closings and 40 openings, which would suggest a net loss of 56 stores, or 10.5%. It’s worth noting that the closings were highly concentrated in the mall. Continue reading →